


Flowers in the Wind

by SaneWithExtraIn



Category: Durarara!!
Genre: Gen, Graphic Depictions of Illness, Hanahaki Disease, Izaya just really needs friends, Slightly non-traditional Hanahaki, pairing very mild
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-04-08
Updated: 2018-04-09
Packaged: 2019-04-19 22:36:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,822
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14247198
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SaneWithExtraIn/pseuds/SaneWithExtraIn
Summary: His eyes began to prickle with the strain of holding it back. The cough tore its way out of him before he could force her to explain.The door creaked as it opened. Before it closed, one word was shot back into the apartment, quietly, like Namie hadn’t quite decided whether to share it.“Hanahaki.”-Izaya contracts Hanahaki disease. Unfortunately, he isn't aware of anybody he harbours unrequited love for...





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I just finished watching the final arc of the Durarara anime and could no longer resist throwing my hat into the Hanahaki ring.

The bright lights of the city at night left ample shadows for certain individuals to conceal themselves in. For today, Orihara Izaya preferred to hide in plain sight. He sat on a park bench, underneath a fading streetlight, watching the world –  his beloved humans – pass him by.

A light breeze brushed at his hair and theirs –  the couple walking along the path in front of him. A man and a woman – her clinging to his arm like she was claiming it as his own; him, smiling down at her like she was the only human in this world worth loving. Did he want that? It was awfully impractical. Stupid even. If anybody should jump out of those bushes over there, they were dead.

Across the street, a black cat drew alongside a woman waiting on the pavement. Her face was caked in make-up, an impenetrable mask of availability. A man leaned out of the window, beckoned her in. As she clambered into the car, her skirt rode up, clinging to the tops of her thighs. The man inside licked his lips.

Did Izaya want that? Certainly not. Watching his humans go about their daily lives was one thing. He lived for that, existed to disrupt it. But him personally? Engaging in things like that? Spending time with people? The same person, over and over? Holding hands with someone as he walked down the street? Definitely not.

So why then was this happening to him?

"You know, you should really arrange for your daddy to have someone pick you up this late at night."

The voice was familiar. Tom. He was crossing the park behind Izaya. There were more footsteps. Three people.

"W-well I thought Kururi and Mairu were going to be there so we could walk home together but..." The Awakusu granddaughter.

Izaya flipped the hood of the parka he was wearing over his head, heart pounding in his chest. A bottle of pills rattled in his pocket and he froze. His breath caught in his throat, a familiar tickle beginning to burn.

Keep it in. Keep it in. He couldn't fight Shizuo here. He couldn't draw attention to himself now.

He was thankful that he'd had the foresight to wear something other than his usual wardrobe. The parka Namie had left in his apartment was big, bulky and a pale green which screamed 'Not Izaya' and had a hood so large that it shaded much of his face.

"It's alright, it's alright," said Tom, coming into view. He was walking in front, turning back with hands raised like he was soothing a frightened animal. “We have to pass by anyway, don’t we?”

Behind came the little girl, clinging tightly to Shizuo's hand. Her cheeks were flushed with embarrassment, her eyes downcast.

“Yeah, don’t worry about it.” Shizuo turned his head towards the little girl, expression soft, warm. Izaya thought he saw the monster give the girl’s hand a little squeeze, but she didn’t squeal or flinch so he couldn’t have done.

She smiled.

The next thing Izaya knew, something was choking him, crawling up from the back of his throat. It was all he could do to double over, hand clamped to his mouth, and try not to vomit until the coughing was over.

By the time he could breathe again, Shizuo, Tom and Akane had crossed the road and were disappearing down a side street, out of view. Only Izaya remained, leaning heavily on the arm of the bench.

Underneath the streetlamp a half-unfurled flower stuck to his palm.

For a moment, he simply stared at the ironic suggestion of white petals, echoes of his earlier conversation with Shinra dancing in circles in his head. Then the laughter forced its way out of his throat just like the flower had.

-

**Three days earlier:**

“You probably have a chest infection,” Namie told him curtly, placing a cup of tea within his reach violently enough that it made an irritating clattering sound but just carefully enough that it didn’t spill, limiting his ability to complain about it.

Before a retort could form on his tongue, he was coughing again into his elbow. The ever present tickle in the back of his throat felt like it had formed a lump, like he’d swallowed a spider and it was somehow still living in his oesophagus and now it wanted to crawl back up.

Sickness was annoying. It was just one of those things. Steps could be taken; measures could be put into place and as a rule, Izaya Orihara rarely picked up the illnesses of the human beings he preferred to observe from afar. But it did happen. And when it did, it only served to remind him of his underlying humanity – the worst parts of it.

There was a chill in his bones, a lethargy that was only eclipsed by irritation, and his body would not stop trying to cough something up that so had so far proven to be nothing more than the occasional glob of hideous yellow mucus. And it had been this way, slowly worsening, for a month now.

Namie didn’t give him the chance to stop coughing before she spoke again. “Of course, it could always be something worse, you know. The longer you leave it, the worse it will get. Don’t you have-“

Panic flashed in his eyes, rose like bile from his stomach. He lurched forwards, hanging over the arm of the chair and coughed so hard that it felt like he was retching. He barely heard the sound of something solid hitting the ground over the sound of his hacking coughs but he felt his throat constrict, felt it fall from his tongue.

Then it was over and he was staring at Namie’s frozen feet as struggled to draw breath. A strangled gasp left Namie’s lips and for a moment, Izaya almost expected her to start coughing too.

“You need to call that underground doctor,” she finally said, her voice strained.

He wiped the moisture from his eyes and the trail of saliva from his chin. On the floor, directly beneath the place where he had hung his head, sat three green lumps. With a sharp breath, which irritated his throat, Izaya reached down in simultaneous fascination and disgust.

The object was sticky with spit but he brought it to his face, turning it over in his fingers.

“It looks like…”

“Flowers,” said Namie, taking several steps backwards. There was finality in her tone and something worse.

“… a bud,” Izaya corrected, pulling its opening like there were answers inside.

His mind had simultaneously ceased to function and gone into overdrive, offering him nothing to work with except that this didn’t seem very human. That he had no clue how this had ended up inside him. That he had no idea how he hadn’t known of it.

“Do you want to call or shall I do it?” said Namie.

When Izaya looked up there was something similar to fear in her eyes. But what had she to fear? That this was the beginning of some new and deadly disease? That he was undergoing some hideous metamorphosis before her very eyes? No, that would amuse her. No, she knew something…

“Namie,” he said, voice low and husky from the coughing fit. “Explain.”

She dodged his gaze. She was frowning, face pale under his artificial lighting. “I think it’s best the doctor explains – but I am not cleaning that up. You’ll have to do it.”

“What have you done?” he growled.

At this, she turned to look at him, a new emotion at the corners of her lips. Disgust.

“Nothing,” she hissed. “This is all your own doing. Now if you don’t want me to call that doctor, my shift is long over and I’ll be taking my leave.”

With that, she crossed the room, barely pausing to pick up her handbag on her way to the door.

“Namie,” he warned. It was both a command and a promise.

“Call the doctor,” she repeated. “I’m a scientist, not a medical professional.”

He fixed her with a look but the tickle returned. His eyes began to prickle with the strain of holding it back. The cough tore its way out of him before he could force her to explain.

The door creaked as it opened. Before it closed, one word was shot back into the apartment, quietly, like Namie hadn’t quite decided whether to share it.

“Hanahaki.”

-

It took two days before he was able to see Shinra. The underground doctor had been on yet another trip with Celty and had cheerfully told him that even if Izaya was dying, he could hold on until the trip was over or go to the hospital and since he wasn’t dying, he could wait. Probably.

Namie had rather unconvincingly called in sick too, leaving Izaya to work alone armed with a single word shot his way by a secretary he should certainly fire and the internet. His actual job had been slow with only two requests for information reaching him and those for things that he already knew all there was to know about.

This had left him ample time to trawl the internet.

It wasn’t especially productive. Googling his symptoms generally let to the advice that he should see a doctor. There were a lot of conditions indicated by coughing up mucus, or blood, or even half-digested food. Since Izaya didn’t recall eating any flowers, he decided that none of those quite fitted his experience.

Hanahaki, which was listed on some less reputable looking sites, seemed to largely revolve around urban legends and literature and didn’t seem to have much to do with Izaya either. He wasn’t coughing flowers. He was coughing things that looked like buds. He had never experienced love of any kind, barring his love for all of humanity of course. Besides which, he didn’t know of any medical condition that revolved around the physical manifestation of symptoms which were caused by such specific, intangible emotions linked to affection for one particular individual.

He would sooner have believed that Celty’s memories actually were stored up her anus than an illness such as this one – especially suffered by him.

By the time he arrived, breathless and a little light headed, at Shinra’s apartment, he was no closer to an explanation and itching to destroy. If he had been feeling better, he might have deliberately located Shizuo and thrown something at him out of the sheer injustice of the situation and the fact that, as a monster, it was acceptable to blame Shizuo for unpleasant situations.

But he wasn’t. So instead he huddled in the large parka Namie had abandoned in her hasty exit, which he had put on partly to disguise his identity and partly to cough all over out of spite, and quietly allowed himself to be ushered in.

All in all, he felt so rotten that he explained his plight with minimal sarcasm and sat hunched and miserable but unprotesting on the bed in Shinra’s guest bedroom while his childhood friend pushed a cold stethoscope onto what felt like every patch of skin his ribcage could offer. He tried to contain his urge to cough as he was told to breathe deeply, sat still and unresisting as blood was taken from his arm and swallowed his pride to pee into a container, which Shinra put on the side and did nothing else with.

Finally, he coughed out two more buds and allowed them to fall into the bedsheets in protest of his harsh treatment.

Shinra had the nerve to look pleased by this. He showed none of the reluctance Namie had, immediately pouncing on one of the buds and examining it closely. He said nothing else until he was done examining it, then he picked up the other one and threw them both in the bin.

“Well, it’s definitely Hanahaki,” he diagnosed finally.

Izaya fixed him with a glare.

“Yours is the first case I’ve personally seen.” He sounded entirely too happy about this. “I don’t know how much you know about Hanahaki.”

“It’s a romantic construct to portray unrequited love in poetry,” Izaya responded dryly, citing one of the definitions the internet had given him.

Shinra raised an eyebrow. His smile, if possible, grew wider. “Well, my beloved Celty is widely regarded as fairytale but she’s only my happily ever after.”

He hugged himself and twirled over to the medicine cabinet. Izaya simultaneously wanted to make a scathing comment but couldn’t find the words or energy to argue with that.

Digging through the bottom drawer, Shinra continued, “But you’re not entirely wrong. Hanahaki is defined as a disease in which plant-like parasites grow in the host body, in response to specific emotions, those emotions being unrequited love. There are multiple strains of the disease. Pulmonary Hanahaki is one of the rarest but Nebula has been studying it for quite some time so  - I’m sure these are in this cupboard – I’m confident there are different treatments you can try. Ah! There it is.”

Shinra was by now half inside the cupboard, different pill bottles forming a makeshift fort around him.

Izaya coughed weakly into his hand, mind racing.

“You haven’t recently lost a mysterious lover, have you?” said Shinra, pausing in his search.

Izaya choked. Shinra quickly grabbed what looked like a bedpan and threw it in his direction but Izaya swallowed the spit he had been choking on and the bedpan remained empty.

“What do you think?” he spat.

Shinra looked at him, a smile in his eyes, and waited.

After a long pause, Izaya answered anyway, irritation dripping from the word: “No.”

“Thought not,” said Shinra brightly, returning to the cupboard. “Hanahaki is quite common in people who have lose a loved one – mostly the elderly but younger people too. It gets into the bloodstream, takes root in the heart and then bam! Heart attack. Of course, the flowers disintegrate quickly after death… Victims don’t even know they had it. I assume they think they’re just dying of a broken heart. Or maybe they don’t think anything at all.”

A pill bottle rattled in the cupboard and then Shinra was dusting it off and holding under the light by the window. “That’s the one!”

He grabbed a pen from the side, next to the forgotten urine sample, and scrawled something on the label.

“Like I said, there are multiple strains of Hanahaki and even in similar strains, the disease progresses at a different rate in different people. Your flowers aren’t fully formed – that’s a good sign. But if you’re coughing plant matter, then it does unfortunately mean that the roots are spread out through your lungs. We will X-ray you to assess the extent of the damage.”

“What then?” said Izaya.

The urge to cough was building again in the back of his throat. His chest felt heavy, the diagnosis undecipherable.

Shinra smiled, his shoulders lifting slightly. “You take these pills and hope it shrinks it enough to surgically remove the matter. Of course, spores might linger, so you’d need to keep taking the pills afterwards but that’s all dependant on the success of the treatment in any case.”

“And if it doesn’t shrink?”

Shinra’s tone didn’t alter. He continued to smile, but his words sent something sharp and cold deep into the pit of Izaya’s stomach.

“Then you take those pills and hope it slows the progression of the disease for a while.”

Izaya opened his mouth to demand an exact prognosis but Shinra cut him off. “There is only one known cure of Hanahaki this far advanced. Unrequited love is the main condition for the disease to take root. Obviously, if your lover is dead, they can’t very well reciprocate, but if the person responsible for those feelings is alive and well then…”

“There isn’t anyone…” said Izaya.

Shinra raised his eyebrows, the look in his eyes clearly stating that he thought Izaya was lying or else giving a stupid response.

Izaya returned his look with a tired yet firm stare.

Shinra simply sighed, offering him the bottle of pills to put away. “Take these three times a day with food. And consider it.”

“Consider what?” Izaya said sharply, ripping the bottle from Shinra’s hand.

“Figure it out,” said Shinra, smiling a knowing smile before clapping his hands together. “Right, let’s organise that X-ray.”

Those words boiled in his blood, itched beneath his skin, burned at the back of his throat and haunted him all the way to park, where Shizuo and Tom were walking the future Awakusu heiress home.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Should I have had this beta-read? Probably. Should I have looked over it again in the morning before posting? Also probably. But I was on a roll and I wanted to get this chapter out.

Namie returned after a week of isolation, an industrial facemask tight to her face, hair tied into an uncharacteristic bun at the back of her neck, and her arms full of cleaning supplies. Izaya hadn’t been expecting her to arrive that significantly early for his shift. She was, as a rule, precisely on time, to the point at which he had installed hidden cameras in the corridor to establish whether she lingered outside until the clock struck like an apprehensive dinner guest.

She didn’t. Annoyingly. She just somehow timed her arrival to the minute. It both infuriated and amused him and before the sickness had hit, he’d been debating expanding his camera radius to establish whether she was lingering elsewhere.

Today, she arrived half an hour early, barging into his apartment so suddenly that he jumped, spilling water down the front of the rumpled shirt he had slept in.

His beloved humans always chose the least convenient time to surprise him.

“Well, well, well,” he said, wiping the bottom of the glass with his sleeve before placing it on the table. “Look what the cat dragged in.”

“You look like roadkill,” she said without pause.

Izaya coughed indignantly, glare fixed on his secretary, ignoring the twinge of alarm that ran through him as he felt the half-formed flower rise in the back of his throat. He didn’t miss the way she flinched, eying him warily as she made for the kitchen. Nor did he miss the apprehensive look she gave the half-bloomed flower he added to the steadily growing pile on his desk.

“I’m taking that week from your wages,” he sniffed when he could speak again.

The only protest from the kitchenette was the loud movement of cleaning supplies. That was unusual – not that anything about this situation could be considered normal.

Without further comment, Izaya locked his laptop and shuffled towards the shower. The hot water soothed his aching body. The steam he breathed and a few disgusting coughs cleared the excess mucus from his throat. Standing there under the jet of water made it feel as though he could almost be recovering from a long cold and would be absolutely fine tomorrow.

He could almost forget about the past week of taking swallowing – with food – pills which would ensure that said food tasted of grass and metal. He had been following Shinra’s instructions with an obedience he didn’t know he was capable of. The multiple alarms on his phone, the multiple blood tests and scans he’d subjected himself to, the attempts to ensure he got a reasonable amount of sleep every night – it was all undeniable proof.

He’d even taken to timing the gaps between each plant related incident, like that might offer any clues as to whether it was getting any better.

It wasn’t. It seemed that for the most part, attacks were spread out randomly. There seemed to be few triggers. Strangely, drinking appeared to be one of them. Unsurprisingly, having a phone conversation was another.

There was a knock on the door as he was weighing himself and discovering that he had, once more, lost weight.

“Your phone is ringing.”

“How unusually considerate of you, Namie.”

There was a pause on the other side of the room, before: “I need to clean the bathroom.”

Izaya reached for a towel, the familiar tickle in his throat already making itself known. He swallowed harshly, giving his hair another rub before wrapping the towel around his waist.

“It’s that doctor,” Namie added, still behind the door.

“Yes, yes,” Izaya said, heaving a theatrical sigh which only made the tickling worse.

He opened the bathroom door a little too quickly, causing Namie, who had clearly been listening on the other side of the door, to topple forwards. Luckily for them both, she caught herself and no collision occurred between them.

Unluckily for Izaya, she didn’t lift her eyes to meet the look he was giving her. Her eyes were fixed on his bare chest, her eyebrows drawn into a frown. He brushed past her, forcing her to take hasty steps backwards to limit physical contact, but he could still feel her eyes on his back.

He wanted to make a comment, something appropriately scathing and teasing. Something about how he knew he was beautiful but it was rude to stare. But his phone was about to reach the end of the ringtone he had set specifically to alert him when Shinra was calling.

“Izaya!” said Shinra, the moment he accepted the call.

“No,” said Izaya, “the loch ness monster.”

“Oh, that’s funny. I could have sworn I’d dialled Izaya’s number. Sorry, Nessie, I’ll leave you be – wouldn’t want any tourists discovering you now.”

“What do you want?” Izaya sighed.

Shinra sighed back. “Do you want the good news or the bad news first?”

Izaya told himself he didn’t care. He just wanted the news. But a fresh lethargy flooded his limbs and he sat, without thinking on the edge of his desk.

“The bad news.”

“I think you might have guessed already but the medication hasn’t had the desired effect. For surgery to be a viable option, the growth needed to shrink but your hanahaki… it hasn’t responded to treatment. The disease is still progressing towards your untimely demise. I did get a second opinion but I’m afraid it’s inoperable.”

Izaya didn’t know how Shinra’s tone could remain so light. He felt each sentence like a weight dropped onto his shoulders, like a rock inhaled, filling his lungs. His heart skipped a beat then pounded in his chest like it was rebelling against the rest of his traitorous body. Though according to Shinra and the internet and a metaphorical forest full of lies, that organ was the biggest traitor of them all.

He almost didn’t dare to ask what the good news was.

Shinra seemed to anticipate this. “Lucky for you, I happen to have got my hands on a second experimental drug that you can take. Yagiri pharmaceuticals were working on it, but development has since passed onto Nebula. It is still experimental and there are of course some potentially nasty side effects but…”

He could hear the shrug in Shinra’s voice. “It’s not like you really have anything to lose, right? Of course, you could always try to cure yourself the other way…”

Dark laughter tore from Izaya’s throat as violently as any of his half-formed flowers. And like the coughing, it couldn’t be stopped.

“Well,” said Shinra, hurriedly, as the laughter lapsed into coughing. “Whatever you decide, Celty will be over with the new medication later in the evening. If you’re going to try it, don’t take any more of the old medication. Wait for the new stuff. Directions will be on the box. Make sure you read it.”

“Who do you think I am?” Izaya spat, breath catching around the flower he just couldn’t expel. “The protozoan?”

Shinra laughed lightly. “Well, I’ll be going. I have a house call to make. Call me if you die!”

With that, he was gone but the pain in Izaya’s chest lingered. The walls seemed suddenly too close, his décor too dark. The phone in his hand was heavy and slid through fingers which only just managed to reflexively tighten before they let it hit the floor.

“Inoperable, huh?”

He spread his arms like he was surveying his kingdom, the image of Ikebukuro behind his eyes. The urge to laugh rose again, thick and desperate in the back of his throat. In the bathroom, Namie dropped the mop. His laughter drowned out the sounds of anything else.

He took himself to the window with shaking legs, gazed out at his beloved humans on the streets below and laughed until the ant-like figures became obscured by tears beading at the corners of his eyes.

_Inoperable._

Of course, he had to try the experimental drug. He didn’t have another choice. After all, it was all well and good Shinra suggesting that he go and make a confession like a teenage girl at the high school lockers. That was fine for all those pathetic saps in the too-romantic tales of teenage romance that his sisters liked so much.

But he? Izaya Orihara? The feared and revered information broker of Ikebukuro? He loved all of humanity. He observed all of humanity. He meddled in the affairs of all of humanity. From _afar_.

He personally loved nobody. He personally was loved by nobody. And there were few people who even personally liked him.

Now he had stopped laughing and wiped his eyes, he could hear Namie swirling the toilet brush around the toilet bowl and it was simultaneously too much noise and not enough.

“It’s past the start of your shift,” he said to her as he passed, his hoarse voice betraying his sharp tone. “Start doing the job I actually pay you for.”

She didn’t say anything as he closed his bedroom door behind him. When he emerged a few minutes later, fully clad in his usual outfit, a face mask looped over one ear, she was still in the bathroom, wiping down the sink.

He didn’t say anything else to her. She didn’t try to stop him from leaving.

-

If he was trying to avoid being seen by any of his many acquaintances, Ikebukuro was not the best choice. The city was full of people he had manipulated, sold information to or about, or negatively impacted the lives of by other means. Before he had even made it out of his building, he had told himself that going there wouldn’t be the best idea. It was probably better to go observe some humans he didn’t know, rather than to be seen in less than stellar condition by anybody who might see that as an opportunity.

But his feet hadn’t been feeling particularly cooperative. For some reason, he wanted to go to Ikebukuro. Besides which, as long as he could keep the result of his coughing hidden, there was no reason to anybody to assume that he didn’t have just a simple cold.

And how much could a cold truly weaken him?

That was how he found himself accosted by Simon on his way past Russia Sushi. While Izaya was in such deep thought that he was barely aware of his surroundings, the large sushi chef called out to him, making him stop in his tracks.

“Izaayaaa!” he called, arms open. His tone brought something thick into Izaya’s throat but he swallowed it. “Tea and cakes are only at elevens but sushi good for any time!”

He turned his head towards Simon, who regarded him with a wide smile.

“You feed a cold, yes?” said Simon, beckoning him in.

Izaya’s shoulders lifted slightly. Throwing caution to the wind, he took a step towards the restaurant. Why shouldn’t he? He was already here and Simon was right – sushi was good. His favourite.

Simon beamed. “No fighting,” he warned, holding back the curtain for Izaya to step through.

“I’m not Shizu-chan,” Izaya reminded for the second time that day.

The restaurant was mostly empty. There were a couple of teenagers on one side, looking uncomfortably close to the table where Kadota had seated his merry band of fools. Erika was animatedly waving a book in the air, while Walker swooned over it. They created enough of a spectacle that nobody noticed his entrance.

He seated himself deliberately in the corner, where he wouldn’t stand out but could observe the rest of the restaurant with ease and made Simon personally come over to take his order of fatty tuna.

Once that was done, he was left alone with his thoughts and observations. The tickle when he inhaled was still there, along with the feeling that something was stuck in the back of his throat, waiting to come up. The walk over had drained him and his feet felt more like weights on the ends of his legs.

But the level of noise, the mundanity of his beloved humans’ daily conversations, the smell of tempura. It was just the comfortable distraction he needed.

His food arrived quickly, the first bite successfully overwriting any lingering taste of metal-and-grass with delicious fatty tuna and soy sauce.

_I wonder if this tuna is the cause of that unrequited love?_ he thought, darkly. But that made his throat constrict so he turned his attention to the other diners.

Erika was now gesturing wildly with what looked like vegetable tempura in a heated debate with Walker about a light novel they were both reading but had starkly different opinions on. While conflict was entertaining, this was a scene that he’d witnessed many times before and didn’t hold his attention.

On the table beside them, the teenage couple were holding hands. Or rather, the girl was holding the boy’s hand, giving a one-sided account of how her friend had blown her off to date some trashy guy. The boy was uninterested, staring at the phone that he scrolled without seeing.

_Ah relationship-related strife._ The girl blabbered on, entirely unaware of the guilt and disdain in the boy’s face as his gaze flickered between her and his phone. Under the table, his feet were angled towards the door, hers towards ladies’ toilets.

As he watched, the boy mustered up the courage to stop the girl, who bristled in her seat. “Are you going to eat that?”

She wordlessly passed him her plate.

Was this what Shinra was trying to imply he wanted? Some half-baked dating adventure with a human being who couldn’t possibly love him and whom he couldn’t possibly care for as much as he loved his humans?

Izaya placed his last piece of sushi in his mouth a little too violently. The boy made an excuse to leave. The girl got up to go to the bathroom. She seemed more irritated than anything else.

From outside the restaurant, Simon’s booming voice enticed more guests. And that was where it all went wrong.

Up until that point, the outing had been going well. Izaya had almost been inclined to believe that Shinra had been playing some sick, twisted joke on the phone earlier because since leaving his apartment, he hadn’t expelled a single flower. He hadn’t run into any trouble that he wasn’t in any condition to repel. He had successfully eaten an early lunch which was not ruined by foul-tasting medication.

Things were going well.

Then a familiar head of dreadlocks walked in, followed by a big, dumb blonde in a bartender uniform. The girl exited the bathroom, bumping Shizuo with her shoulder. The girl looked up to apologise, recognised her victim and lost her ability to say the word ‘sorry’ partway through speaking it.

“Don’t mention it,” Shizuo said, surprising all parties.

Izaya blinked hard, taking a hasty sip of his drink as the urge to cough rose like the flowers in his throat.

Moments later, Tom was seating himself at the bar, the girl was escaping with haste lest the brute of a man change his mind, and Erika, who apparently lacked any sense of preservation, had descended on the monster.

_Escape_ , said the rational part of Izaya’s brain, the part that usually prompted him to flee when Shizuo’s rage and Izaya’s stamina reached the critical point. He knew he couldn’t fight Shizuo today. He knew that this was his best chance of escaping before Shizuo could throw a projectile he might not be able to dodge.

But Kadota’s group was all around Shizuo. Erika was tugging at his arm. Kadota was laughing gently. Shizuo’s eyes were downcast, face dominated by a put-out pout. Tom was sniggering in the background. They were probably teasing him but for some reason no projectiles were being thrown. No property was being damaged.

Because as uncomfortable as he appeared to be, Shizuo clearly liked them. And they, his beloved humans, clearly liked that monster. They weren’t afraid of him. They were actively seeking out his company.

And Izaya didn’t understand why.

His pulse was beginning to accelerate between ears, disrupting his ability to listen in. Yet he couldn’t look away.

His breath caught in the back of his throat. He had just enough time to clamp a tissue over his mouth before the flower began to tear its way out of his throat and he doubled over in a hacking cough.

Panic and colourful cursing filled his mind. If they weren’t aware of his presence before, they were now. He wouldn’t be able to fight back. He needed to move but all he could do was tremble as he expelled cough after cough with nothing coming out and not enough air going in.

Eyes watering, vision blurred, he lifted his head to see Simon advancing with a glass of water. Nobody else had moved but all faces were angled towards him.

He blinked. The water was set on his table. The moisture from his eyes rolled down his cheek. Shizuo alone came into focus, expression hard, body tense, barely contained rage burning in his eyes. Izaya’s name exited his lips in a low growl.

With one last, shuddering cough, the flower fell from Izaya’s tongue into the tissue. Air re-entered his lungs in a burning rush, one gasping breath then another. The tickling began again like thousands of needles pricking at his insides.

But he could breathe, so he could he move.

Gripping the tissue tightly in his fist, Izaya pushed past Simon and fled as quickly as his battered body would take him. He didn’t stop until he was able to safely hail a cab two blocks away.

It took several minutes of coughing and gasping before he was able to breathe properly again, by which time, his face tingled and his throat was too raw to make conversation. His body trembled against the seats and the tissue he clenched tightly in his hand, sat forgotten until he had to open it to cough into it again.

Something dropped from the tissue into his lap, stark white against the dark fabric of his trousers. Another half-bud, his mind helpfully supplied.

As he finished coughing nothing more than mucus into the tissue, his eyes fell onto the bloom. It wasn’t a bud, nor even half of one.

It was a fully formed flower, white like snow.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading! ^_^ Any comments are most appreciated.
> 
> I promise there will be a full interaction between Izaya and Shizuo soon.
> 
> Next chapter:  
> Izaya tries the new medication and tries to get to the bottom of the unrequited love puzzle.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading ^_^
> 
> Any comments are appreciated.


End file.
